Hughes believes that within the Global mindset we are all trying to cling onto our own sense of cultural heritage, be this from the country/city or province we grew up in, our religious views, our class values, our historical roots or stories that we pick up on the way. Often this work uses humor to emphasize Hughes' view of the importance of the approachability of contemporary art. This approach often proves to create works that can be interesting and engaging to everybody and not only the creative and academic.
Hughes usually begins the process of his practice with personal reactions to the environment around him leading him to academic, non-academic and artistic research usually worked on in a playful manner. Often Hughes undertakes participatory-based research projects to inform and inspire his personal practice, which leads to the ultimate creation of work. His key interest is in the immediacy of lens based media, although his practice has diversified to a vast amount of different mediums.
Conversations with Birds Participatory Project, 2010, Video, HD 1080p, 8mins
All birds like humans have regional dialect. In fact birds regional dialect is more defined than our own, to the point that birds from different areas of the same country can not understand each other.
This project aims to query the relationship between mans understanding of birds utterances, but also the crossing of regional dialects.
4 of the most common European birds were chosen as examples and individuals were shown an illustration of each bird and asked to utter the sound of each bird as they understand it.
One word to describe you?
Absurd
Your favourite place to visit?
What's it like talking to birds?
Robins are overtly territorial so playing robin song makes them agitated, they puff them selfs up ready for a fight nothing like the cute bird that adorn our christmas cards.
Starlings are hard because they are mimics so simply recording them and playing their song back does not always work.
JackDaws are great because they have such a vast array of utterances their particularly chatty towards the end of the day.
sometimes no birds want to chat I suppose much like bird watching its a waiting game,
Have you got any exhibitions on the cards?
What makes your practice unique?
Top three galleries?
Mission Gallery, Swansea
Arlofini, Bristol
Debut Contemporary, Notting Hill, London
Do you have advice for emerging artists like yourself?
Visit www.nicolaswilliamhughes.com for more information.
